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TERRA INCOGNITA - Marks to the Invisible - Back
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The first school mistress of Gwrhyd mixed infants school, Matilda Thomas, from Alltwen, Pontardawe commenced duties on 13 January 1889. She found ‘the children in a very backward condition (and) therefore decided to teach them the elementary subjects only for a time’. 

The school was closed in 1906 and became a hospital in 1928 to treat smallpox sufferers, which then closed at the time of the Second World War. 

In 1973, I moved to a smallholding on the Gwrhyd mountain. At that time, the schoolhouse was a partially roofed derelict shell without windows or doors and acted as a shelter for the grazing sheep and cattle.
Inscription engraved in the Blue Pennant Sandstone of the ruined perimeter wall of the Gwrhyd mixed infants school, Gwrhyd mountain, Swansea Valley.
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School House in 1906 and site in 2014
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